Cyber cafés: Where Indians first saw the Internet

It is 20 years since the Internet was first made available to the Indian public and we take you back to the cubicles and rows of flickering CRT monitors where many of us would have had our first encounter with the Internet.

There was a time when the Internet was equivalent to cyber cafés. We may have come a long way, but once accessing the Internet meant a visit to a cyber café. And we were even choosy about which café to go to. There were several filters that we had set for ourselves. Though charges per hour was the paramount factor, the setup of the café, performance of machines, and crowd visiting them were other factors influencing our choice. It is 20 years since the Internet was first made available to the Indian public and we take you back to the cubicles and rows of flickering CRT monitors where many of us would have had our first encounter with the Internet.